I love it when my worlds collide. Nothing makes them collide with quite so much glee as anything related to pencils and knitting. So the Sinuous Pencil Scarf knitting pattern has made it quickly to the top of my knitting queue. The pattern is available for $3.99 via Ravelry. I believe it would be a perfect accessory for the socks I’ve already started. Time to cast-on!
Posts of the Week:
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Ink:
Paper & Notebooks:
Other Interesting Things:
There are far too many end-of-year sales for me to list them all here but if there’s something you’ve had your eye on for sometime, now might be a good time to double-check and see if there’s a discount, price reduction, coupon or free shipping offer available.
Lots of our favorite pen shops are doing year end inventory clear outs, like Pen Chalet (don’t forget to add the coupon code YEAREND in cart for an extra 10% off), Levenger is holding its semi-annual up-to-50% off sale and this year they’ve added lots of new planning supplies back into its offerings as well as its pens, Circa systems and travel bags. Notemaker is hosting its Boxing Day sale with 15% off sale items with the coupon code BOX15 through Wednesday 30 Dec. 2015. Kate Spade is having a huge sale that includes discounted prices on planners, stationery, phone cases and much more. Use the coupon code THRILL on sale items for an additional 25% off as well. I ordered the notecard set above for $16 (half the original price!) that way.
Lots of other shops are having sales so if you know of a particularly good one, leave a note in the comments. I’m sure there’s someone with some Christmas cash burning a hole in their pocket.
Remember, the best way to find out about sales, special offers and new products from any of your favorite retailers is to subscribe to their email newsletter list. I have mine filter into a special folder so they don’t clutter up any urgent messages but can be reviewed and perused regularly. Happy shopping!
I say this every year but I love the start of the New Year. Its a chance for new beginnings, opening that brand-new planner, journal or notebook and starting on a new path, or course-correcting the one you set last year. I hope that 2016 will be a year of great adventures and great joys for everyone, myself included. I know a lot of us had rocky moments in 2015 but I know there were also some great triumphs as well.
For me 2015 was filled with wonderful ups and some hard downs as well. The Atlanta Pen Show was the absolute pinnacle for me and was my saving grace in what turned out to be a rather tumultuous year that followed with work- and health-related stresses. Brad and Myke and all the pen community welcomed me so warmly and openly in Atlanta and the whole world over that I felt like I had the whole world at my back this year and, for that, I am eternally grateful.
As I move forward into 2016, I want to stay committed and actively involved with the pen-and-paper community and be a resource and asset to the wonderful people that are a part of it. Expect to see more ink, paper, pen, and pencil reviews here as always. Holler, if there’s something particular you’d like to see more.
This summer, I started taking drawing and painting classes to try to be more creative and its something that I’d like to continue to do in 2016. I hope that in spending more time making art, I’ll also add more art material reviews to the site as well with the occasional watercolor, colored pencils, and other art material reviews for people who may want to try their hand at more sketching, drawing or mixing of media in their notebooks. By no means, will I be changing the focus of the site but I want to help people feel comfortable using pens with other materials. To be brave and to experiment! Even the most expensive piece of paper is still cheaper than a pizza from the take-out joint down the street, right?
One of the most meaningful pieces I wrote all year, for me anyway, was the post Why Does All This Matter? which came hot on the heels of devouring half of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic book (I promise there will be a review of the whole book in a week or so!) and it still resonates in my mind. All these pens, pencils, notebooks and accouterments are all a means for us to be thoughtful, creative, to remember, to relive and to explore our ideas. However those tools help you do that is good but we have to remember not to let them impede the acts themselves.
This is something I plan on tackling quite a bit this year. The nature of doing product reviews is that I acquire a lot of samples. Its not that I have anything that is not good quality, its just that I am buried under a lot of it and it often leads to indecision and fretting over which ink to use, which pen to pick up or which notebook to write in next. One of my goals for 2016 is to pare down the stash dramatically. If anyone has a good idea about redistributing the wealth without breaking the bank, please let me know.
So, my goals for 2016:
My keep-on-keeping’ on:
Do you take the end of the year to re-evaluate and make plans? I never think of this end-of-year planning as “resolutions” but as a chance to re-tool, re-focus and start fresh. What do you want to accomplish in 2016? Let’s do this together!
There are lots of new products hitting the market for 2016 and some are already available for pre-order so I thought I’d include a few here if you wanted to squirrel away some of your holiday funds for a few of these.
The limited edition Lamy AL-Star color for 2016 is called Charged Green and is definitely a Well-Appointed Desk-approved color. Fontoplumo has the pen available for pre-order in all its forms and will be shipping it in early 2016. Pen Chalet has the pen listed on their site but its not available for order yet but should be available soon.
The Lamy Safari for 2016 will be Dark Lilac but is not expected to ship until mid-year. The Dark Lilac will also have a matching ink! First confirmed sighting of it came from Goldspot Pens.
Goulet Pens has the new limited edition Kaweco Skyline Sport in Metallic Purple. The pen is still a reasonably-priced plastic pen with pearlescent coloring in the plastic to give it the metallic look. There is also a solid deep purple Skyline Sport if you like that better. Prices are $25-$27.
Filofax UK has already unveiled some of its new planner covers for 2016 in the UK. I’m not sure if any of these will come available in the US yet but you can get them shipped over if they are covers you must have. They are currently available in Personal and Pocket sized only. I really like the Tweet Organizer — just stick a bird on it!
How can I not support a Kickstarter project that is attempting to create a product to make writing easier and more comfortable for left-handed writers? I couldn’t. So I put my money where my mouth (or in this case my keyboard is) and backed the Leftybooks project which is a notebook designed to help left-handed writers write more easily without dragging their hands through their ink or graphite.
I pledged for the Ambidextrous Couple Set with the B5 Lefty notebook as well as an A5 dot grid notebook. The total with shipping will be around $35. The one aspect of the books not included in the video is the paper stock weight which is always a subject of heated discussion amongst the fountain pen community but the video specifically talks about environmental factors and FSC certified paper so I suspect the paper is not going to be fountain pen friendly but fine for gel, rollerball, pencil and ballpoint.
The project was the creation of a team out of Spain called Imborrable and offers lines that are angled downward ever so slightly to help keep lefties with any hand position from smudging quite so much.
The campaign has 19 days left and they are only one-quarter to their goal of $10K. Let’s help them get there — one Leftybook at a time! And let’s put an end to the smudge!
Pens:
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Planners & Organizers:
Gift Guides:
Other Interesting Things:
